Mazda Protegé

Comments

Newcar: My Jetta has a body-color grille. All them here in the US do, from what I thought.

Meade: You could have at least installed the nicer wheels instead of those cheap looking plastic wheel covers when building the car. And you also did not ask permission to use my photo (of my face, no less) in the pic.

They actually sell chrome strips for the grille in the Jettas. I think they look dumb though. And the black grille makes the car look like just another cheap imported car. Those mesh ones look especially cheap looking.

I'm fairly impressed with the K&N air filter. I went into it with a completely open mind and have noticed some favorable results. In a normally aspirated engine like the Protege, that is without a specialized cat-back freeflow exhaust or cold intake, I didn't really expect to notice any difference. The Pro is just a little more responsive now.

Dale,

Swamped with work....hmmmm, could be defind as executive excrement that flows downhill and drowns the recipient.... I think that should help define it.

Hi all. I just bought a new Protege (LX 2.0) and I've heard a lot of hype over the K&N Filters. Just wondering if anybody has actually seen any positive results in power or fuel economy with a K&N filter.

Only three days ago you said, "This aside, the Protege is THE perfect car."But then you also said, "May I suggest that you buy a two-year-old Protege--they are out there for less than you think and it may actually cost less than a fully-loaded Rio."Someone telling someone else to buy a 2-year-old Pro while dumping his own. Sounds like a Merrill Lynch stock analyst.

My Response:

I still contend that a used Protege is the PERFECT car and it is a better choice than a new Kia Rio. Many cars that I have traded or sold have been very good cars and I sold them with some regret. Being that they depreciate quickly, the Protege is also an inexpensive used car, too. So, none of what I have said is dishonest as you implied with your stock broker comment. I am not "dumping" my Protege as you put it. If you saw my previous posts you will see that I have discussed trade-in values with other people in this forum. I am selling my manual Protege (which I prefer to the automatic) out of necessity. I plan on taking the money and buying, you guessed it, a two-year-old Mazda Protege with automatic which my wife will use to get to work. I will then drive our four-year-old Nissan (that has half the miles of my current Mazda)--it has a manual transmission, too. I do not like automatics nor have I ever but I must put this aside to accommodate my wife who, due to nerve damage caused by steroids (she had a pancreas/kidney transplant)she can no longer feel the clutch pedal.

BPI, when I asked for comments and suggestions, I meant I wanted some input about the listing. Instead, you chose to attack me.

It is the likes of you, BPI, who have made the Mazda forum the nasty place that it can be.

don't know about the little exchange that took place there, but I, for one, am truly sorry to hear about that Curt. It's pretty obvious that you made the right decision and I wish you and your wife the best.

Just like some others that do not own a Protege, I have never felt unwelcome here. However, watch out for that Meade fellow.

Maltb... you have been helpful as have a few others in this forum. I do not want to make a blanket judgement about anyone posting here. However, it seems like the place gets a little mean spirited; it seems like the moderator has to jump in more often than in other forums. I should not be so thin skinned...

I am on my way to the Mazda lot right this minute--they have a handful of 1999-2001 Proteges sitting on the lot--one ES model with auto that has really caught my eye.

Down in south Alabama our fellow Southeners like to do things to the extreme. It is not uncommon to see yards with a dozen VW Beetles rotting in the yard or one fellow, for example, has just about every variation of the Corvair that you can imagine. So, Big H, a pair of Proteges would not be a bad thing.

Now the 240 SX is a beautiful car, especially classy since it was discontinued. It just doesn't seem right to let them rot in the front yard, however. Protegefan, thanks for the sales pitch on the Protege. I hope that it will sell itself on its own merits but I am realistic in knowing that 62,000 miles is a hard sell for a 2000 model.

That was discovered by drivers in flash floods. In one instance, a Beetle driver came to a low area where the road crossed a flooded creek. He kept on going and his Beetle floated. Keeping the engine running the exhaust pushed his car across. Following drivers in American cars thought the water was low and followed him in, only to find water up to their door handles. LOL!

The original Beetles' weather stripping around the doors made the car water-tight. They were also tightly built with thicker steel sheet metal and there were no holes in the steel platform for water to get in. The shifter cables and wiring passed through a welded steel tube that was the car's backbone.

Here's another bit of trivia, the engine was reliable enough to be used as a powerplant in light aircraft (in Europe) without having two spark plugs in each cylinder, as required in American light aircraft engines. The reason for two plugs per cylinder is safety, if one electrical wiring system fails the pilot has the second one. Which brings up another interesting point -- with both plugs firing an light aircraft engine has more power. When running on one plug per cylinder it seems to cut power by 50%. So why don't car manufacturers use the two plug system instead of turbos?

It's to get a more even combustion front in the combustion chamber, since it's pretty flattened.

Two plugs may get more complete combustion, but I doubt it would be a 100% improvement today. Perhaps when engines used to be really inefficient and exhausted about as much gas as they combusted. But there might be some.

I think sometimes we all forget how challenging it can be to "read" somebody's intentions or personality through their postings on a message board. Certainly there have been many times that my friendly jabs at Paul (vocus) and his responses -- while WE have been friends for two years and know we're joking with each other -- have been taken by others as rude and cruel-natured. Sometimes things are not meant the way they are taken here, and what one member regards as humorous ribbing may be regarded by the recipient, whose sense of humor is not the same, as a hostile attack.

I think everyone here, for the most part and 99 percent of the time, has the best intentions. But it's our different senses of humor and our different personalities -- the very thing that makes this topic interesting -- that cause us to have misunderstandings every now and then. I'm guilty of it, I know -- and I apologize now for my insensitivities in the past and the ones I have yet to commit. I know I will; it's my personality. (If you REALLY want to get a sense of my personality, you'll have to come over to the Yahoo group!!!)

Anyway, enough of Psychology 101 from your resident non-psychology major. Everybody have a good day.